From Sabah To Pancoran Advancing Social Inclusion In Southeast Asia

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FROM the borderlands of Sabah in East Malaysia to the outskirts of metropolitan Jakarta, in areas like Pancoran, Indonesia, live communities that are erased from the state’s imagination.
These individuals are born, grow up, work, and contribute to society—but remain unrecognised as citizens. Without legal documents, birth certificates, or access to basic services, they exist in a fragile state: socially present, but legally invisible.\
In Sabah, it is estimated that over 800,000 residents live without citizenship status. Many are descendants of migrants from Southern Philippines or Indonesia who have resided in Malaysia for generations.
Although their children are born on Malaysian soil, they are denied birth registration due to their parents’ undocumented status.
This results in an inherited cycle of exclusion: they cannot enrol in public schools, access healthcare, or receive legal protection. To the state, they are nobodies.
According to UNESCO, stateless children in Southeast Asia are four times more likely to drop out of school than those with full documentation.
Meanwhile, a 2023 UNHCR report highlights that stateless groups in Malaysia face significantly higher economic and health vulnerabilities compared to citizens.
These figures underscore how administrative exclusion directly contributes to inter-generational structural inequality.
A parallel situation exists in Pancoran Buntu II, South Jakarta. Residents who have lived there since the late 1990s and early 2000s are not registered within the country’s civil administrative system.
Labelled as occupying “illegal” land, they are denied identity cards (KTP), family cards, and other vital documents.
As a result, they are excluded from accessing public healthcare (BPJS), public schools, social assistance, and formal employment—simply because their homes are not officially recognised.
Both in Indonesia and Malaysia, the state handles the issue of marginalised communities with rigid administrative or repressive approaches.
(Image: Bernama)In Sabah, the government has resorted to mass deportations or leaving people in legal limbo for years. In Jakarta, so-called illegal settlements are frequently targeted for forced evictions under the banner of urban development, with no fair relocation or protection of residents’ rights.
In both contexts, state responses have exacerbated inequality and moved further away from the principle of social inclusion—an ideal that should underpin all public policy.
Instead of embracing diverse forms of life and community, the state reproduces exclusion, rendering many of its people unseen, unheard, and uncounted.
Social inclusion is not just about access to services—it is about creating equal spaces for participation, regardless of one’s origin, economic status, or administrative identity.
People’s presence must be acknowledged—not only as recipients of rights, but also as decision-makers.
Citizenship politics in Sabah and PancoranWhat is striking in both Sabah and Pancoran is not only the state’s neglect, but also the communities’ collective resilience. Amid structural barriers and legal invisibility, these communities have forged participatory and historically grounded practices of citizenship.
In Sabah, stateless communities have set up community-based alternative schools for their children. These institutions, although unregistered in the national system, are vital spaces where children learn to read, write, and engage with the world.
They also form economic cooperatives, sports clubs, religious groups, and other social networks that maintain community cohesion and provide tools for survival.
These initiatives stem from a shared understanding that active involvement and mutual care are the keys to sustainable collective life.
Similarly, in Pancoran Buntu II, residents have created informal learning spaces for children denied access to public schools due to lack of documentation.
In the narrow alleyways of their neighbourhood, they organise local futsal leagues, art classes, community discussions, and citizen forums—initiatives that build solidarity and a sense of ownership over their living spaces.
Local youth groups organise community activities and defend their neighbourhood from external threats, while also engaging in legal advocacy, administrative assistance, and partnerships with civil society networks to demand formal recognition from the state.
These efforts go beyond mere survival—they are cultural and administrative acts of resistance against state-enforced invisibility.
Sabah and Pancoran residents are not passively marginalised; they are actively building grassroots citizenship, even without formal recognition.
In both cases, resistance does not come through protests or violence, but through the dignified creation of life amid adversity.
This is grassroots citizenship in action—a social practice that demands more than documents. It demands acknowledgment of existence, contributions, and rights. These communities refuse to be shadows in their own lands.
This phenomenon shows that social inclusion is not a one-way project from state to citizen. It is a collective struggle, built on solidarity, organising, and courage. But such struggles cannot be left to communities alone.
Both the Malaysian and Indonesian governments must abandon rigid legalistic-administrative approaches and instead build policies grounded in human rights and social justice.
Cross-border solidarity(Image: Suhakam)It is time to move beyond storytelling and towards coordinated, measurable action. To truly realise social inclusion in Southeast Asia—especially for marginalised groups in Sabah and Pancoran—cross-border collaboration is necessary.
Civil society organisations from Malaysia and Indonesia must work together to go beyond conventional advocacy and begin building a citizen-centred knowledge architecture.
This includes community-based data generation, participatory research, and policy design rooted in real experiences.
In doing so, we not only demand change from the state but also empower communities to shape the direction of that change. True social inclusion must be built from below—across borders, languages, and identities.
A first step could be citizen-led mapping, where communities identify their local conditions, barriers to accessing basic services, and the forms of social exclusion they face daily.
This is not a mere technical exercise, but a political act: it repositions residents as the authors of their reality, rather than as mere data subjects of the bureaucracy.
Participatory mapping can form a foundation of accurate, politically meaningful information. It documents that state neglect is not hypothetical, but structural—and that it can be challenged through citizen-driven data and lived experience.
Social inclusion requires reforms in three key areas: access to basic services like education, healthcare, and employment; meaningful participation in decision-making processes; and formal and cultural recognition of the identities and contributions of excluded communities.
Such collaborations must also advocate for fiscal policies explicitly committed to social inclusion.
The Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS) estimates that transitioning Indonesia to a socially and ecologically just economy would require public financing of over RM250 bil (approx. IDR 892 trillion) by 2045. These figures are not abstract—they signal the need for real structural investments.
In contexts like Pancoran and Sabah, public budgets should not be skewed toward investor incentives or elite infrastructure projects that displace the poor.
Instead, funds must go towards expanding basic services: education for undocumented children, community-based healthcare, social protection for informal workers, and legal-administrative recognition of settlements long labelled as “illegal”.
With such priorities, states will not just build cities—they will restore dignity and public trust. 
Delpedro Marhaen is the executive director of Lokataru, a human rights organisation based in Indonesia.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of  MMKtT.
- Focus Malaysia.

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